Without Warning

On Tuesday, we had some brown outs, followed by a black out.

When the power goes out in our house, it's always interesting. It's an old house - it does some interesting things. And when the power flickers, or fails, it tends to go out in half of the house while maintaining full capacity in the other half.

Really, it does make life interesting.

When I used to have my office in the basement, I remember thinking I'd only tripped a fuse because I could hear Kevin watching the tv upstairs. This was when we first discovered the eccentricity that is our home.

But at least when there's a brown out, you can prepare. We have short-term power back-ups for the computers, so you have a few minutes to save your stuff and at least not have to cry and fuss about losing something you've been working on.

Of course, the long-term power failures are never welcome. You never know how long the power might go out for, especially on a day like Tuesday, when it was the whole town and the surrounding area.

When I used to live on a Gulf Island, we'd get some wild windstorms. Well, wild storms all-round. But those windstorms would send trees down, and the trees would take the power lines, and boom - instant power failure.

Longest one I lived through: three days.

So, like I said, the brown outs and the bit of power buffer is most welcome. Because freak acts of nature rarely throw me for the same kind of curve ball as I lived through on the coast.

Now, if only there were some way to have family problems come in on a brown out warning system.

Almost exactly a week ago, I picked up the phone and heard my brother-in-law's voice on the other end of the line. He had news. My mother had turned up at his office looking for him.

That would be the mother he hadn't seen in over 9 years - about 8.5 for me.

The mother that'd never met my husband, never met her two younger grandkids...

The mother that walked out of my life back in 1998, and I let her go, part of me thanking God I didn't have to deal with all that shit anymore. I didn't have to wonder about the next phone call, the next suicide attempt, the next time someone was arrested. I could try to play at being normal. Finally. Only 26 years into my life...

I don't think I've typed much that's been cohesive this week. My mind's been elsewhere most of the time. And, add to that my adventures in babysitting. Nephew Dashiell fell asleep on me and his boogers coagulated on my clothes.

And now I'm a sniffling, hacking, hoarking sicko.

There's a lot in this family situation I'm still sorting through, and I'm not sure when I'll have my head wrapped around it, if ever. I've been feeling a lot of things this week - anger, resentment, frustration.

Best of all, I told my best friend, who told her husband. Know what he said?

"Does this mean Sandra's going to have all sorts of good stuff to write about?"

Yeah, we writers, we sometimes lead tortured lives. And the writing is cheaper than therapy, so at least there's that. In a way, it isn't a bad thing. My female protagonist in Suspicious Circumstances has a poor relationship with her mother, so maybe more experience in the real-life family drama department will be the catalyst to me actually deciding where I want to go with a future Lara/Tymen offering.

Anyway, I just thought you guys should know, because I know I haven't really been myself, nor have I been around the blogs as much as usual.

And I'm not really up for taking shit with my usual brush-off attitude and easy-going disposition.

But I really do appreciate those of you who've been dropping me notes and trying to make me smile this week. This is about the only place right now where I don't feel completely alone, even if I don't feel completely myself.